The Lindbergh Kidnapping (1932): Did They Execute the Right Man?

I'm Domonique Luchin, and this is the case the newspapers called the crime of the century. At about nine o'clock on the night of March 1, 1932, someone climbed a homemade ladder to the second-floor nursery at the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey, and took 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr. from his crib. On the windowsill was a misspelled note demanding $50,000, signed with two interlocking circles and three punched holes.

In this episode I follow the record: Dr. John F. Condon, the retired Bronx principal who became "Jafsie," his meetings with "Cemetery John," the $50,000 paid at St. Raymond's Cemetery, and the body found on May 12, 1932, a few miles from home. Then the money trail: ransom gold certificates turning up across Manhattan, and a gas station attendant who wrote a license plate number on a $10 bill in September 1934. That plate led to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a Bronx carpenter with more than $13,000 of ransom money hidden in his garage.

The State built its case on four pillars: the money, the handwriting, the ladder wood traced to his attic, and the witnesses. Hauptmann was convicted in Flemington on February 13, 1935, and executed on April 3, 1936, still saying he was innocent. His widow, Anna, spent the rest of her life fighting to clear him, and the books on both sides keep coming. So I ask the question the case never escaped: did they execute the right man? Reenactment scenes in the video are labeled RECREATION.

Read the full story, with the timeline, the evidence for and against, and the sources, in my long-form write-up: The Lindbergh Kidnapping: The True Story and Whether They Executed the Right Man.

Sources: FBI History: Lindbergh Kidnapping, Wikipedia: Lindbergh kidnapping and Wikipedia: Richard Hauptmann.